The present invention relates to a method for enabling the remote control of devices.
For the avoidance of doubt, in the following description of the present invention the term device is used to refer to an entity that is capable of being remotely controlled by any type of external device over any type of wired or wireless connection.
The first demonstration of wireless remote control was by Nikola Tesla, who exhibited a radio controlled boat on a specially built pond at an electrical exhibition in Madison Square Gardens in 1898. U.S. Pat. No. 613,809 was issued on this invention.
Despite this venerable pedigree, the commercial exploitation of remote control technology for domestic electrical and electronic appliances did not occur in earnest for about another 50 years, when it was eventually pioneered by Zenith in connection with televisions. Their first television remote control, the ‘Lazy Bones’, appeared in 1950, and this was connected to the television by means of a long wire. Whilst wired remote controls for televisions were not a long-lived technology (principally because users kept tripping over the cord), they have always continued to be manufactured for many other types of electronic appliances, from traditional wired remotes such as those for slide projectors and dictaphones, to more modern appliances such as digital camcorders: the Sony RMVD1 is a recent example of this latter art.
It is wireless remote controls that now comprise the majority of such devices. In 1955, Zenith's ‘Flashmatic’ was the first wireless television remote control to appear; it operated by means of visible light signals made to photoelectric cells on the television. The following year, Robert Adler's ‘Space Commander’ became Zenith's first truly practical wireless remote control; it was a mechanically operated ultrasonic device. Ultrasonics remained the basis of remote control technology until the development of infrared transmission devices in the 1980s. Infrared remains the technology of choice for remote control devices today, though RF (Radio Frequency) is commonly used in cases where the line-of-sight communication required by infrared is impractical.
Although wireless remotes are still the more common variety, it is noticeable that wired remotes are making something of a comeback, especially on appliances for which wires are needed in any case; the clearest example of this is appliances with audio functionality. This includes mobile phones, which can be controlled via buttons in a module inserted into the audio lead on hands-free headsets, and in a rather more sophisticated form on top-end digital music players (all the market leaders such as the Apple iPod™, the Creative Zen™, and the iRiver™ have optional or integral wired remote controls).
In summary, the remote control of modern electrical and electronic appliances is today extremely widespread in any situation where close physical proximity between the person seeking to operate the appliance and the appliance itself is either                impossible; as in the case of model vehicles such as aeroplanes or ships        awkward; as in the case of appliances such as air conditioners that are usually mounted in a high position on a wall or a ceiling        inconvenient, because it requires a physical alteration or effort which is deemed inappropriate for the circumstances of use; as in the case of modern audiovisual and audio appliances such as televisions, DVDs and music players.        
Until recently, the technology for remote control of appliances was limited in a number of related ways:                Remote control devices were manufactured and sold with the appliances which they were intended to control, and closely coupled to them; proprietary signals and protocols were used for communications. This is true even of infrared devices. Although there is a standard for infrared communication developed by the Infra-red Data Association (IrDA, see http://www.irda.org/), it is not utilised by remote controls. There are in fact “many different coding systems in use, and generally different manufacturers use different codes and different data rates for transmission.” (from http://www.epanorama.net/links/irremote.html).        
It should be noted in this context that the existence of programmable remote controls, which can be used with appliances from many different manufacturers, is not evidence that they all conform to a common standard. Such programmable devices are able to emulate the operating modes, transmission protocols, data rates and control codes of each of the various manufacturers rather than being able to run in a single mode that functions in all situations.                The remote controls appliances were supplied with were all dedicated and non-expandable devices; they had a fixed set of capabilities and were not able to perform any functions except those embedded at manufacture time.        Similarly, all appliances that were to be controlled remotely had to be specifically designed for this; their capabilities were fixed and they were not able to perform any functions except those embedded at appliance manufacture.        
However, electronic appliances are increasingly becoming multifunctional and programmable; the trend is for them to be built around the same type of central processing units and memory that are employed in general-purpose computers. There is substantial evidence that where this is the case, it is increasingly possible to circumvent the limitations described above.
In the domain of remote control technology, appliances that are built around the same processor and memory components that are used in programmable computers are generally now able to utilise standardised communication technologies. Among these standards are:                Bluetooth (see the Bluetooth Special Interest Group web site at http://www.bluetooth.com/). This is a low-power short-range wireless networking protocol which is implemented in various profiles designed to be used in specific situations. One of the most common uses of Bluetooth is in wireless headsets for mobile telephones, utilising either the handsfree or headset profiles, either of which enable the headset to remotely control the mobile phone.        Firewire/IEEE 1394 (see the 1394 Trade Association web site at http://www.1394ta.org/ or the The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers High Performance Serial Bus Bridges Working Group P1394.1 at http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/1394/1/index.html). This is a fast serial protocol running over a wire, which is increasingly being used for remote control of multimedia appliances; the standard includes a Digital Remote Control Command Set.        ANSI/CEA-2027; this is a relatively new standard, being finished as recently as July 2004, and comes from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). It defines an interface that can be used for control of audio/video equipment interconnected via a home network using IP (Internet Protocols).        
Although there is an increasing use of standards such as these, it is notable that many companies do not utilise them as much as they ought. For example, despite the fact that Apple invented Firewire, they do not use the technology in their own remote controls; people have had to go to some lengths to reverse engineer the proprietary protocols used in the iPod remote control, some of which are described at http://www.maushammer.com/systems/ipod-remote/ipod-remote.html).
As well as the above standards-based technologies, it has also become apparent that where appliances incorporate a programmable digital computer, linking two together enables one to control the other, provided that both are running compatible software. A larger static appliance (such as a personal computer) can therefore be controlled by a smaller mobile appliance (such as a cellular phone), giving in many cases a superset of the functionality of conventional remote controls. Many examples of this technology exist which enable mobile telephones to be used to control media players and other applications on personal computers via Bluetooth, such as Bemused (http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/˜ashley/bemused/) and Bluetooth Remote Control (http://www.labtech.epitech.net/remotecontrol/), which both control Windows PCs. Sailing Clicker enables a mobile telephone to control an Apple Macintosh (http://homepage.mac.com/jonassalling/Shareware/Clicker/) while implementations for Linux also exist (such as http://www.iptel-now.de/HOWTO/BT_REMOTE/bt_remote.html).
The prior art as described above shows a gradual progression from dedicated, inflexible and proprietary remote control solutions to versatile, flexible and standard-based ones.
However, all the standards-based solutions described above are limited by the fact that they are specific to bearer technologies, and very often also specific to transport protocols used with that bearer. Those that are skilled in this art will be aware that many possible bearers for remote control signalling exist, including but not limited to:                Bluetooth (using any one of a number of possible profiles);        Wireless Ethernet (802.11), using any IP based signalling method;        Infrared (both proprietary and IrDA);        Proprietary RF solution;        IEEE 1394 (Firewire) utilising either the IEEE 1394 command set or ANSI/CEA-2027;        USB (Universal Serial Bus) including USB-OTG (On-The-Go);        Other wired solutions, including RS-232 serial protocols.        
An appliance that is designed to work with a remote control using any one of these bearers is not currently able to work with any of the other types of bearer, irrespective of whether or not the remote control uses standard protocols. An MP3 or other music player designed to be used with its bespoke wired remote control cannot be made to work with a generic Firewire, USB, Bluetooth or Infrared remote control device even though it may have such an industry standard interface available.
Even with remote control devices making use of the same bearer, appliances may fail to work where an incompatible protocol is implemented. For example, it is well known that the Bluetooth headset and handsfree profile are sufficiently different that a Bluetooth enabled mobile phone that only supports the headset profile will not work with a Bluetooth peripheral that only supports the handsfree profile; this type of incompatibility has caused distress to numerous consumers, as there is no easy way of fixing it.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a remote control interface which at least alleviates the above mentioned problems caused by the close coupling between remote control solutions and specific bearer technologies through the provision of a generic remote control interface that can be used by application software running on an appliance to receive commands to and from any type of remote control device, irrespective of the protocol or bearer that it might be used to transport those commands.
The same generic software interface can also be used by a remote control device to send commands to an appliance, once again irrespective of any protocol or bearer.
Furthermore, any appliance incorporating a programmable computing device which implements this generic software interface can not only use it to receive commands from a remote control device, but can also use it (in conjunction with a suitable application) to act itself as a remote control device.